Food brings people together, and so does growing it. Neighbours gather around a bush of red tomatoes or a bed of arugula, and work together to nurture them.
The CDNA provides an avenue to share experience across the neighbourhood with growing herbs and vegetables, and organizing volunteers to care for them.
Why It’s Important
Not all residents in the Canary District have the balcony sunlight, space, or time to grow their own herbs and veggies. Working in sunny common areas together opens up food gardening to more residents. Shared herb gardens can also cut down on food waste by letting residents take what they need rather than buying big bunches of fresh herbs that they’ll need to throw out later. The work itself, in bringing residents together, cultivates something even more valuable to the community: a strong network of people ready to come together to benefit their neighbours.
The Story
Every building is its own mini-community, with its own way to do things.
At Canary Park, volunteer residents maintain a vegetable garden on the ground floor, as well as an herb garden on the barbecue deck. Over the years, neighbours have tended to plenty of tasty arugula, tomatoes and zucchini. As part of the building’s landscaping and amenities this effort provides fresh produce and a nice splash of colour in common areas.
At Maple House, staff nurture a garden of flowers, greens and herbs for residents. Residents can join workshops hosted by Evergreen Brickworks on proper care and harvesting. When there’s a bumper crop, extras are packaged up into goody bags available at the concierge for any residents who need some fresh produce.
How about your building? Are you growing shared food resources, whether vegetables or herbs? Would you like to?
See here for growing resources, including a list of what's growing this year!
What You Can Do
If you want to start a garden in your own building, or to join with existing projects, email [email protected] and we'll hook you up!